


You screamed

by Hailhydration



Series: I heard you scream [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Feels?, He's the sheriffs son, I mean, Idk i'm bad at tagging, M/M, Pre-Slash, Pre-first season, Smol Derek is just smol, Smol Stiles is a badass, Sourwolf, Wolf Derek Hale, and cute, kind of?, of course hes a badass, smol beans, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 17:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10496436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hailhydration/pseuds/Hailhydration
Summary: Derek comes from a family of werewolves, a screaming boy is far from the most unusual thing he has seen...yet, somehow, he can't keep the boy out of his mind. So he keeps coming back to watch and listen, but eventually just observing isn't enough.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [that_queer_one](https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_queer_one/gifts).



> The time period this starts in is before the Hale fire and before Stiles' mum dies, but she's sick. I've got Stiles' age at about 8-10 and Derek as 14/15.  
> I hope you like it!

 

A boy screaming at the top of his lungs while perched high on the rocky hill is really not that peculiar. Derek comes from a family of _werewolves,_ a screaming boy is far from the most unusual thing he has seen.

Yet, he keeps returning to the same spot whenever he catches the familiar scent of the boy. And when the boy climbs to his precarious throne, Derek is always already in the woods watching. Then listening, as the boy opens his mouth and screams into the wind.

He just looks so innocent, so soft and out of place against the harsh, rocky background. He’s young, no more than ten, with freckles and moles dotting his pale skin and shaggy longish hair flopping against his forehead. His lips are so red, look so soft, and it’s ridiculous that such an appealing mouth is capable of such anguished screams.

Sometimes he’s angry, his face stony and his eyes hard as he screams loud and long until his throat is raw and his voice is broken. Then, he stands against the wind, looking for all the world like he’ll fall from the cliff accidentally or even throw himself into the wind just because gravity dares to say he can’t. Those times, Derek is on edge, always ready to run out and catch the fragile human body. He never has to, but he knows that he would. Always, anytime. He’d catch the screaming boy before he hit the ground even if it killed him.

Usually, however, the boy is sad, his eyes are full and his face is contorted, crumbled. Those times his screams are haunting, heartbreaking sounds that hurt to listen to. Those times, the screams last only a short time before they give way to even more heartbreaking sobs that make something in Derek shatter. Then, the boy isn’t standing proudly, angrily, insolently, instead he’s slumped against the rock, his back against the rough cliff and his arms wrapped around his tiny body. Those times, Derek has to claw his own hands to shreds to stop himself from revealing himself just so he can replace those skinny arms with his own and pull the young body against his own.

It was one of those times that Derek first, finally showed himself.

He’d been training hard to master the full shift, to be the first of his siblings to imitate his mum so fully. He knew Laura had been trying also, and there had being a fierce rivalry between them as they batted to be the first. The first to be at one with their wolf so completely, the first to prove themselves, the first to make their parents proud. He’d been trying for months, yet it was the screaming boy who gave him the final push to change.

Derek couldn’t explain his urge to get closer to the boy, only that it was there, and that he couldn’t do it as a human. So it was as a wolf- a full wolf!- that Derek made himself known to the boy who screamed.

He wasn’t sure what he expected, perhaps for the boy to automatically recognize Derek as a friend, maybe for him to be wary of the big (but smaller than Derek had hoped, it’s actually sort of embarrassing), black wolf appearing out of the shadows to join him. He could have even screamed and backed away, like a normal, intelligent person would do upon meeting a wolf in the woods.

Of course, the screaming boy didn’t do anything expected, which Derek shouldn’t have been so surprised at in retrospective. It wasn’t like a boy who regularly came out to the middle of nowhere just to climb a rocky cliff so he could scream into nothing would react to anything the way a normal, predictable person would. Of course, Derek could have done without the surprisingly sharp pocket knife pressed against his neck and a light, lithe, _tiny_ body straddling his fur coated body. It was ridiculous that such a small child could have reacted so fast, caught Derek off guard so completely. It was also ridiculous that such a small child could reasonably expect a wolf to be pinned down by a body that couldn’t have weighed more than 25 kg. Derek could overpower the boy in seconds if he wished, but he didn’t. He stayed still, stayed down, stayed underneath the heaving body until the boy slipped off on his own.

The pesky knife stayed at his throat though, and it was really quite incredible that the boys hand was so steady compared to the rest of his form, which shook with each shuddering breath he took. He knelt in front of Derek, his chocolate eyes firmly trained on Derek’s yellow ones. They stared steadily at each other for seconds, minutes, hours, until suddenly the boy broke away, his hand grasping the pocket knife and expertly closing then pocketing it in seconds.

“There’s no wolves in California” is all he said, Derek’s ears perking up to catch every muttered word. “So you aren’t real.” The boy spoke surely, as if just by saying the words aloud made them facts. His high pitched, childish voice echoed in the silence, and Derek stayed still, his head still bowed between his front paws as he basically submitted to the child in front of him. For just a moment he was glad that there was no one around to see him act like this, weakly surrendering to someone he could take down in a moment’s breath.

He closed his eyes to remind himself that this was what he wanted, that this was the same boy who he’d been watching day after day. That this was Derek’s choice. It took longer than he would have liked to admit to get over his pride and open his eyes again, and even then it was on reflex as he felt a slight pressure against his head.

The boy was still kneeling in front of the wolf, but he had stopped shaking  and his hand was now hesitantly running itself over Derek’s head, thru his fur and over his barely there mane. Fingers froze for a moment before gently fondling Derek’s soft ears, causing the wolf to relax and lean into the pleasure. He only realised his tail was wagging when he became aware of a rhythmic thumping noise behind him, which made his head snap up in astonishment as he looked incredulously behind him. It was embarrassing! He wasn’t a dog, he was a teenager, a werewolf, someone with full control who should not be wagging his tail like a common pet.

A muffled noise bought him back to himself, and for the first time he realised that by snapping his head up he’d accidentally hit the boy’s own face. Concerned, he snuffled tentatively at the figure in front of him, worried by the shaking shoulders and hidden face. When that didn’t change anything, Derek inwardly rolled his eyes and stuffed his whole snout between the arms covering the boy’s face, causing them to break apart and reveal it to Derek, who immediately huffed in annoyance as he realised that the boy was laughing- _laughing_ \- at him.

Momentarily offended, Derek backed away in indignation. But he didn’t leave, no he didn’t leave. Because as much as he’d like to deny it, the sound was beautiful, and the sight was breathtaking. A large smile all but covered the freckled face and the eyes that had only a little time ago been filled with tears were clear and bright. The laughter that echoed in the clearing almost erased the memory of anguished screams that Derek had heard earlier. It was a pure, un-guarded moment of complete happiness like he’d never seen on the boy and it filled him with a warm, unexplainable feeling. So no, Derek didn’t leave. For one foolish moment he thought he’d never want to leave.

Then the boy was talking again, his voice interrupted by giggles and his shoulders still shaking as he stumbled over his words. “Oh god, your face! C’mon sourwolf, don’t look so grumpy, that was gold!”

Derek glared at the boy, wondering for a second how his wolf could even look ‘grumpy’. But the boy was still smiling so Derek stayed.

And Derek came back. And the boy kept coming. And Derek kept changing. And sometimes the boy would still scream, sometimes he’d still climb and stand on the edge taunting gravity, sometimes he’d still cry and rage and shout. But most of the time, he’d stay at the bottom of the cliff, lie flat against the soft patches of grass and Derek would lie with him as he talked.

And talked. And talked. The boy talked so much. Far too much of his time was spent insulting Derek-who he insisted on calling sourwolf-for his strange, grumpy, mannerisms, but over time Derek learnt more and more things about the screaming boy. Like his name-Stiles-which was such a ridiculous title it resulted in the younger boy rolling around laughing for a full five minutes at Derek’s disbelieving scoff. Stiles laughed more than he cried now, which shouldn’t have made Derek so proud, but it did. The boy seemed so much happier now and it was just so right, like the world had been broken but Stiles’ smile forced it back together again.

Not that Stiles was always happy, there was, after all a reason he’d started coming here in the first place to let his frustration out, and after time Derek learnt what it was, on a grey day where the boy gripped Derek’s fur and kept his arms around the wolf as he sobbed into his fur. Stiles’ mum was sick-dying-and there was nothing he could do about it.

“They think I don’t know.” He whispered, his voice empty like it cost nothing to speak the words but at the time ripped out his very soul to say. “She always…smiles at me and tells me what we’re going to do when she gets better and leaves the hospital…and dad always pats my head and tells me it’s going to be okay, but I can read and I can hear what they say when they think I’m gone…she’s dying. _Dying._ Leaving me. There’s _not_ going to be an after hospital, and it’s _not_ going to be okay and I just want them to stop _lying_ to me! I want to stop being afraid that every time I say goodnight and go back home it’s going to be the last time I ever can and I want to hug mum and not be afraid that I’ll crush her because I can see through her skin, sourwolf. I can see through her skin. And she’s so tiny, I sometimes think I’ll break her.”

Stiles cried, and Derek felt like crying with him and holding him and helping him and telling him that it’ll be okay, but he couldn’t. And even if he could, he wouldn’t. Because Stiles was right, it wasn’t going to be okay and there was nothing he could do about it.

He’d tried, going home after that horrible day and asking his mother if she’d consider giving Stiles’ mum the bite. She’d looked at him like she knew what it meant to him, and told him that she couldn’t save everyone, and in that moment Derek had hated his mother and he’d told her so, and she’d just opened her arms and he hadn’t even hesitated before collapsing into her. Maybe Derek had cried then, maybe he’d felt like raging and screaming and shouting and maybe he could understand why Stiles’ had started coming to the cliff in the beginning.

And maybe that’s the reason he was so weak when he went out on his own and met Kate. And maybe when she told him he could help her he thought of Stiles and how he couldn’t help him and nodded. He’d nodded and he’d followed her and he’d trusted her because he could help her, he was making a difference in her life.

Then she took his family’s life and what was there after that? How was he supposed to come back from that? There was darkness and nothing and in his head Derek was at the top of Stiles’ cliff just screaming.

Afterwards was a blur, he was rushed from place to place and he had held tight to Laura’s hand like he was a child, not a teenager and he’d ended up in the hospital, sitting alone on a chair outside a room where he knew Laura had gone to see Peter.

He smelt Stiles’ before he saw him, smelt his familiar scent, recognized how he smelt on one of his bad days, when he cried and screamed but intensified so much, smelling of loss and anguish and death and it was worse than anything Derek could imagine. But he didn’t have to imagine it, because Stiles was walking down the hall, trailing his feet with his head down and he was passing Derek and he wasn’t looking up and Derek knew that Stiles’ had lost his mother like he’d lost his entire family.

Derek knew he could have said something, done something, even felt something for Stiles, but he was drowning and his head was screaming and he didn’t deserve to help Stiles. He didn’t, couldn’t help anyone. So he stayed alone on the chair and Stiles stayed alone as he walked down the corridor and disappeared again. His scent lingered, a bitter smell that only served as a reminder of Derek’s failure.

When Laura told him they were leaving Beacon Hills Derek didn’t smile, though he felt as though something must have changed on his face by the way Laura’s scent changed, like a tiny bit of tension had been let go. It was on the last day that Derek returned to the woods, to the cliff, to Stiles. It was the last day before he started a new life, and the first day since his world had ended that he smelt the boy. He’d walked to the clearing, and he heard Stile’s before he saw him, screaming in a new, raw, heartbreaking, unbearable way that made him want to turn around and run. And run and run and run until it stopped hurting.

Derek got to the clearing and he stopped. And he tugged, looking for that switch he’d grown so used to. And he tried to change and only found emptiness. Nothing, where there’d always been something even before he mastered the ability. He’d fallen to the ground, his claws out and digging deep into his palms as he tried to trigger the process, to find his wolf, to bring it back.

By this time Stiles wasn’t screaming, but instead shouting. Shouting for Derek. Crying as he ripped off his beanie and Derek saw his shorn hair, so close to his skin where the thick brown locks had clung messily. Stiles looked broken and Derek was broken but he didn’t leave even as Stiles swayed dangerously close to the edge.

“Sourwolf! Please! Please I need you. I’ve never needed you more. I’m alone. I’M ALONE. Come on Sourwolf I know you’re there. Come out you stupid beast. COME OUT. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

Stiles shouted until his voice couldn’t anymore and even then Derek heard his whisper. _Don’t leave me don’t leave me don’tleaveme._ Stiles fell against the rock and Derek fell against a tree and they both cried because they were alone and they were just two broken boys who weren’t broken together.

And finally, Derek heard the distant echo of Laura’s howl and he left beacon hills to the sound of Stiles’ voice.

“Don’t leave me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you thought:) Next part is mostly written, it should be up tomorrow.  
> Also, random fact: What Stiles says to Derek when he tells him about his mum is almost directly quoted from something I wrote before my Dad died when I was nine.


End file.
